(One of the New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of 2012) The winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize, following three Governor General's Awards, the O. Henry Prize, and the Man Booker International Prize, Alice Munro is undoubtedly the contemporary master of the short story. "It has become practically de rigueur for reviewers to refer to Munro as 'our Chekhov'," noted the New York Times Book Review after Munro's previous collection. "[But] at this point in Munro's career, how much can it add? What is certain is this: She is our Munro. And how fortunate we are to call her that." In this new collection of 14 stories she illumines the moment a life is forever altered by a chance encounter or an action not taken, or by a simple twist of fate that turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into a new way of being or thinking. A poet, finding herself in alien territory at her first literary party, is rescued by a seasoned newspaper columnist, and is soon hurtling across the continent with a young child in tow, toward a hoped-for but completely unplanned meeting. A young soldier, returning to his fiancée from World War II, steps off the train before his stop and onto the farm of another woman, beginning a life on the move. A young woman having an affair with her father's married estate lawyer comes up with a surprising way to deal with the blackmailer who finds them out. And a girl who can't sleep imagines night after wakeful night that she kills her beloved younger sister.